Paul was harboring no resentment against his loved ones in Galatia. He had not taken their defection personally. He knew only too well their spiritual immaturity and how impressionable they were. When he was among them, they had wanted to worship him one moment and to stone him the next (Acts 14:11–13, 19). He made every allowance for their national character. Paul knew from where the trouble was coming—not from his volatile converts but from his cunning Jewish enemies. That was from whence most of Paul’s troubles came.

Paul reminds the Galatians that when he first ventured among them with the gospel, he had been greatly handicapped by illness. All kinds of suggestions have been given as to what Paul’s infirmity was. Ramsay thought that it was malaria that Paul had contracted in the lowlands of Pamphylia. Other scholars have suggested ophthalmia and even epilepsy. Whatever it was, we do know that Paul was not a well man. As time passed, he needed the constant services of a physician, a role that Luke filled

Here we have one of those revealing autobiographical notes that crop up from time to time in Paul’s letters. Such notes help us to see him as a real person and to picture him in our minds: “And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not,” Paul says. Other translators have rendered the passage thus: “That which was a temptation to you in my flesh” (W. E. Vine); “You did not despise me or reject me with abhorrence because of the trial that my bodily condition must have caused you” (F. F. Bruce); “You did not shrink from me or let yourselves be revolted at the disease which was such a trial to you” (J. B. Phillips); or “And your temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor loathed” (R. Govett). The language certainly suggests that whatever afflicted Paul physically at that time not only was a sore trial to him but also of such a nature as would cause natural repugnance in them.

But, far from being repelled by Paul’s physical appearance, they welcomed him with open arms. The message that he proclaimed more than compensated for a mere physical infirmity, however unpleasant. “[Ye] received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus,” he said (v. 14). He had come to set them free. They had received him as though he were a messenger from another world. We know that this was literally so at Lystra, where they hailed him as Mercury, the messenger of the gods (Acts 14:12). And, when the glorious truth about Christ dawned on their hearts, they could not have received the Lord Himself any more kindly or enthusiastically than they had received him.

It was a telling argument in the context of this epistle. The Galatians were about to trade their glorious freedom in Christ for a mess of pottage concocted from them by the legalists—a poisonous brew of self-effort, dos and don’ts, religious requirements, and man-made laws. Had they forgotten the joy of their salvation so soon, a joy so unspeakable and full of glory that not even the repulsive physical appearance of its herald had stopped them from embracing both the message and the messenger?

“Where is then the blessedness ye spake of?” Paul demands. Oh, how happy they had been! How blissful in their newfound faith and freedom! “What has happened to your joy in the Lord that you want to shackle yourselves with the iron chains of legalism and law?” Paul exclaims.

Their joy in their life and liberty in Christ had been not only ecstatic but also emphatic. “For I bear you record,” Paul cries, “that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me” (v. 15), a statement that lends credence to the belief that Paul, at the time of his visit to Galatia, was suffering from some disfiguring form of eye disease. He might have been suffering from other things, too, of course, but it certainly seems as though an eye problem of some sort was at least part of his physical infirmity.

Oh! How they had loved him for the freedom and joy he had brought them! “Ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and given them to me,” Paul says, reminding them. The word that he used was exorussō, meaning “to dig out.” It is a vigorous word. The only other place it occurs is in the story of the palsied man whose four friends brought him to Christ. They found that access to Jesus was cut off by the crowd. Undaunted, they hauled their needy friend up onto the roof of the house. They then proceeded to uncover the roof. And when they had “broken it up” (exorussō), they lowered him to where Jesus was (Mark 2:4). So eagerly would the Galatians have given Paul their very eyes in their honeymoon days with Christ. Paul reminds them of that fact. He will leave no stone unturned in his efforts to bring them back to their earlier faith. “You would even have given me your eyes,” he reminds them. He had been God’s instrument to open their spiritual eyes. They wished that they could have repaid him by giving him their physical eyes. Such was the overwhelming sense of gratitude.

Then, too, we note Paul’s perception: “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (v. 16). Paul valued their friendship. He would do anything to cultivate their continued regard and goodwill. But he was not prepared to compromise the truth just to keep on their good side. We can well believe that the Galatians, now giving heed to doctrine that Paul vigorously opposed, would begin to feel a degree of uneasiness toward him. Their former ardor had cooled perceptibly. We can be sure that the legalists would not hesitate to do everything in their power to undermine both Paul’s character and his convictions. If, by now, the Galatians were entertaining evil thoughts about Paul, that fact would add to their coolness. Paul was a wonderful friend to have. He could also be a formidable foe, as Peter had discovered at Antioch (2:11–21).

But Paul had not become the foe of his dear Galatian converts. He was foe indeed to their false teachers, but foe to the Galatians? Nonsense! Just because he told them the truth did not make him their enemy. People, however, who entertain evil thoughts about someone often tend to transfer similar thoughts to them. They think evil of someone and imagine, in return, that that person thinks evil of them. “Oh no!” Paul assures them, “I am not your enemy. I tell you the truth, but I am not your enemy.” Their love for him was being suppressed, but his love for them was as bright as ever. A lesser man than Paul, hearing what people whom he had thought to be his friends were now saying about him, might react against them. Paul had long since died to all of that kind of thing.

(a) The deceivers and their goal (4:17)

Paul now pauses for a moment to take a brief look at the people who were doing all of this damage: “They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that ye might affect them” (v. 17). The expression “zealously affect” is zēloō. It carries the idea of being zealous, or of courting someone. The action can be either good or bad, depending on the context. The word comes from a root meaning “to boil.” In a good sense, it can mean “to desire earnestly” (1 Cor. 12:31); in a bad sense, it can mean “to envy” (1 Cor. 13:4) or to be jealous (Acts 7:9). Here the motives of the Judaizers are exposed as being evil. Paul knew what these people were like, knew how mean-spirited they were, and knew their narrow bigotry and evil motives. They were courting the Galatians and seeking to win them over to their views for their own ends, not because they loved them. Paul had long since proved his own genuine, disinterested, personal love for them, but these men had done nothing of the kind. He had come to evangelize; they had come to proselytize. Paul had come to win them to a Person; they had come to join them to a party. The Galatians would be a star in Paul’s crown, no doubt about that. All that the Judaizers wanted, however, was to make them a feather in their cap.

(b) The deceived and their good (4:18–20)

Let the Galatians make no mistake. Paul sought only their good. He mentions his teaching: “But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing, and not only when I am present with you” (v. 18). Nothing about Paul was mean-spirited or jealous. He had no objection to people coming to court them, even in his absence, as long as it was for the truth. But Paul could see through the legalizers; they wanted to come between Paul and the Galatians. They wanted to “exclude” them (ekkleiō). The word means “to shut out.” They wanted to slam the door of salvation and shut people out from all that was available to them in Christ. That was their evil goal as far as the unsaved were concerned. As for those who were already saved, they wanted to exclude them from the fellowship of other believers.

When I was in my early twenties, I left Britain and went overseas. I found myself far from home; in a strange land; all alone; and far from family, friends, and fellowship. One who has not experienced it can have no idea of what a terrible thing loneliness is. I hungered for news from home and haunted the mailbox looking for letters from loved ones whom I had left behind.

I looked for a church. I was working for a bank, and in those days wages were so low that I lived almost on the poverty line. I could not afford to travel far to go to church. I found a small fellowship of believers who met not far from my lodgings, and I sought their acceptance. It did not take me long to realize that I had fallen among those who were rigid legalists.

They were good people. They treated me well during the year that I was with them. Their order of service was very distinctive, their singing was unaccompanied, their sincerity was real, and their preaching was impromptu (“as the Lord leads”) because they did not consider it proper to invite speakers or to arrange an order of service. Nonetheless, from time to time, I heard gifted men and learned much.

When the year I was with them had passed, the bank moved me to another city. I approached the leaders of the church and asked if they could recommend a church in the new area, many miles from where I had been. They looked grave. “Dear brother,” they said, “there are no churches at all in that part of the country.” Actually, a large number of churches were there, and I ventured to say so. “Oh no!” they said, “those are not churches. We cannot have fellowship with places like that.”

“What would you suggest I do?” I asked, curious by now to see how far such “separation” would go. One of the elders advised me to resign my position with the bank. “The Lord will provide,” he assured me when I raised the obvious question as to how I would live in a strange land without work. I told the man that I could not resign because I had signed a contract with the bank while I was still in Britain, and the contract had not yet expired.

“Then, dear brother,” he said, “we suggest that when you get to your new location, since there are no churches in the area that we can recognize, that you sit at home on Sundays and read your Bible.” He said that, in all seriousness, to a young fellow in his twenties. It was the most foolish piece of advice I ever had in my life, and given in all sincerity. Fortunately, I had enough sense to reject it. The brother, however, was not yet finished. He looked me straight in the eye and warned, “If you go to any of those places there, that you call churches, don’t you ever come back here.”

It was my introduction to Galatianism. These men wanted to shut me out from fellowship within the vast circle of the mystical body of Christ. They wanted me to be a proselyte to their brand of Christianity, a brand of belief that was concerned more with dos and don’ts than with anything else. “They desire to shut you out!” Paul warned his Galatian converts, who were in danger of being overtaken by the siren voice of legalism.

Next, we have Paul’s travail: “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (v. 19). The gospel is not merely a set of precepts to be believed; it is a Person to be received. It is not a question of changing some pagan religion or philosophy in favor of Christianity; it is an introduction to a new life in Christ. Law and grace are mutually exclusive as a ground of salvation. Law says, “Do!” Grace says, “Done!” Law says, “Try!” Grace says, “Trust!” Law says, “It’s up to you!” Grace says, “It’s up to Him!” Law takes us to Mount Sinai; grace takes us to Mount Calvary. Grace provides not only for the believer to become a child of God but also for the child of God to become a man of God. The one grows out of the other as the oak tree grows out of the acorn. Growth is the evidence of life. Paul had travailed in birth once when he first brought his beloved Galatian converts to faith in Christ. Now he has to travail all over again to bring them to maturity, to save them from legalism. Any wholehearted surrender to what the legalists wanted of them—circumcision, Sabbath keeping, conformity to dietary laws, and all of the rest of it—would, of course, constitute such a denial of Christianity as would prove that those who embraced that could not have been genuinely saved at all in the first place. For them, too, Paul would need to travail in birth again because their first “birth” would have been no genuine birth at all but a miscarriage.

Which brings us to Paul’s trouble: “I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you” (v. 20). That is what we now call “body language.” One’s posture, facial expression, and tone of voice speak, sometimes adding force to what we say and sometimes giving it the lie. Every child learns, early in life, to read this body language from parents and peers.

The tone of Paul’s letter to the Galatians was severe, uncompromising, and full of threats and thunder. He wished with all of his heart that he could have been with them. The trouble is that letters are often cold and formal and fail to convey the twinkle in the author’s eye, the twitch of his mouth, the sudden furrow between the brows, or the sudden blush or blanching of the cheek. Neither can letters convey the tone of a person’s voice. We can be sure that, even as Paul wrote the stern words that comprise so much of this letter, his great heart beat with love for his converts. Here and there that love breaks through, even in such a letter as this. But the subject was too serious and the issues at stake too far-reaching, to allow full play to the heart. This was a matter for a cool head and an inflexible will. This was a time for stern rebuke and warnings and iron resolve. Paul had all of that, and they come through in this letter.

But, oh, how Paul wished that he could have been there in person. They would have seen the legalists cower and tremble before the lash of his tongue, the cold logic of his mind, and the passion of his soul. They would have seen a lion defending its young, all wrath for those who would do them harm and all yearning for those in peril of their very souls. As it was, he could only write and pray that God would make up what was lacking in tenderness of tone.

This verse might mean that Paul was puzzled as to the true status of the Galatians. Their defection from the truth had left him with doubts. He would like to be able to change his tone and speak with certainty and conviction about them. Or perhaps he was perplexed as to their reaction to his Letter. He would rather be speaking with them in person. Then he could better express himself by changing the tone of his voice. If they were receptive to his rebukes, he could be tender. If, however, they were haughty and rebellious, he could be stern. As it was, he was perplexed about them; he could not tell what their reaction to his message would be.